This note wants to review the series of reasons why creativity in our region is still not valued in its proper measure as a dynamic element of material and human development.
Among the reasons that we can cite are the following:
1. Creativity is seen as a mysterious, unapproachable and non-transferable gift that only some privileged possess.
This is the image that the media reports leave us every time they highlight a very intelligent young person, a technician who surprises with a technological novelty, etc. The rest of the underprivileged would only be left with the role of admirers and, perhaps, diligent auxiliaries of the enlightened one.
Generally, few wonder about why resourceful and creative people emerge. Fewer still ask whether the habits of the highly inventive person can be analyzed and reproduced or imitated.
2. Others conceive of creativity as a capacity that, if not cultivated with care in childhood, cannot be developed in adulthood. It is perceived almost as a physical or organic quality that if it was not stimulated early there is no point in spending time on it later. Hence, some initial schools or early stimulation centers strive to promote their courses and programs for children. And the large mass of adults receive no attention in cultivating this capacity.
3. Creativity is considered the exclusive heritage of certain professions or specialties, for example, the architect, the systems engineer, the publicist, the graphic designer, the writer and the plastic artist. And those of us who are not part of these unions can do little. Never, it is believed, we will be able to match the numerous sparks of the professionals mentioned.
4. Certain educational habits are inhibitors of creativity. If our educational system strives to always reward the submissive and the adapted and to punish those who break the rules or do not follow the established procedures, we are before a repressive structure of ideas and creativity. Happily, this has undergone variations in recent years. There are already schools and universities that cultivate other teaching methodologies.
5. Finally, in the social fabric itself there is mistrust of the successful ones, of those who made progress - or want to do it more or less quickly - thanks to a singular idea. This has to do with the marked social differences that separate us. As our social scientists show, a series of phenomena typical of Latin American society are explained from the widespread prejudices that cross it.
6. These educational, social and cultural reasons explain another psychological fact: there are people who ordinarily do not perceive as problematic a situation that perhaps a minority would consider complex and worthy of solution.
These reasons should lead us to rethink how we understand creativity and its cultivation, in such a way that we draw up plans and actions that banish the beliefs outlined above.
